On Wednesday night, after the boys went to bed, Jenny and I scrambled to put up the Christmas tree and decorations as a surprise for the first day of December. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Jenny worked out 25 days of activities for us to do leading up to Christmas Day. Day 1 was the tree. Last year Jonathan was 10 months old when we put up the tree, so we used our 4 1/2 foot tree and set it on a small table. This year Brenden requested the big tree, a 7 1/2 foot beast that we used for our first Christmas in the house. I’m impressed that he remembered it. We did most of the decorating but left a few non-breakables for the the boys to hang on the tree the next day.

Thursday morning we let them come downstairs to see their surprise. Jenny made a video of it. There’s nothing like the joy and enthusiasm of children. (Note: the first part is dark because we didn’t think about lighting. The rest is much easier to see, and the audio is pretty good throughout. Listen for both boys.)

This is the Christmas Countdown that Jenny mentions in the video.

This should be a great month. We’re almost done with our shopping thanks to Jenny’s hard work in November. We’re spreading out our family Christmas celebrations throughout the month instead of trying to see everyone on Christmas Eve or Day. Jenny is almost done with her anatomy class. And for the first time, Brenden seems genuinely excited about Christmas.